


Differences in Faith

by Morgyn Leri (morgynleri)



Series: The Priest, the Goddess, and the Scholar [1]
Category: Highlander, Near Eastern Mythology
Genre: Crossover, GFY, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-15
Updated: 2011-06-15
Packaged: 2017-10-20 10:44:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/211937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morgynleri/pseuds/Morgyn%20Leri
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Not as different as you might think, Darius. Gods, after all, can die."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Differences in Faith

**Author's Note:**

> I think this is actually a scene from a larger story, but I don't know what that story is yet, and it is sorta needed to make the double drabble [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/149974/chapters/317267) make more sense.

Once he worshiped her as a goddess of war. Perhaps not in the name she's as yet remembered by, but in the one aspect she's most laid aside. Now, the world has changed, and the both of them with it. He serves a religion barely older than himself, and she seeks faith for her abilities in fertility, neither championing war and destruction as they once had.

She has her hands buried in the soil of his garden, planting herbs at his direction, looking for all the world like a normal, mortal woman. As good as disguise as any Immortal, he supposes, if perhaps for different reasons.

"Not as different as you might think, Darius." Anat turns her head to look at him over her shoulder. "Gods, after all, can die just as mortals and Immortals can. No matter that the means are different."

That she can discern his thoughts is no surprise, and Darius smiles a moment before passing her the next delicate seedling to be put into the prepared bed. Despite the brief moment its in her hands, it seems to take on a greater vibrancy, a vitality he knows from experience will last the season through. It is the only thing that is visible of her deity, so carefully hidden under its mask of humanity.

"Their faith in you is important, then." Something that's brewed at the back of his mind for centuries. "Faith, rather than knowledge." He wonders if it is the same for the god he serves, that he has never met. If the faith of all those who believe in Him have molded him from nothingness as Anat has said she was molded by the thoughts of men.

"Not quite, but close." Anat gently settles the plant in its new place, putting soil in around it with delicate care. "Knowledge of my talents feeds faith in those skills, better allowing me to use them. Knowledge of _how_ that faith helps my skills - knowledge of the truth of my deity - tends to lend itself to dependence on my intervention, and a subsequent sapping of my energy and my life."

She pauses, sitting back on her heels. "At least, that is the simplest part of the explanation. Their expectations, their knowledge, also tend to shape me more than such would do to a mortal woman. I find it comforting that there are fewer to believe in me, and expect certain things of me, in this era." After a moment, she looks up at him, a smile curling the corners of her mouth. "And that is merely what I have to deal with when coping with mortals. Immortals are a whole other dimension to the dynamic."

Darius chuckles, passing another seedling to her. "Do any Immortals take you merely on faith?"

"None that I've met." Anat returns to her task with a shrug. "Immortals seem to have a greater faith in what they are certain will outlive them. And while few gods give the oldest of your kind that reassurance, it certainly provides the younger ones with that. So, they know, and they believe all the better for it."


End file.
